1. We don't have to \"destroy\" the entire globe, Krypton-style, to make it uninhabitable, or even just terribly unhealthy for us. And we are more than capable of doing that; heck, we ARE doing it, in multiple ways.

2. Actually, it isn't even 6,000 years of damage that's dangerous -- just the last few hundred, but it's accelerating much faster than the planet's ability to absorb it and re-equalize.

3. Also, I have to wonder, on the basis of the second comment, whether the poster is simply a troll. If not, he's delusional about far broader aspects of reality than just global warming. (I once knew an elderly woman who chided her granddaughter for recycling on the grounds that the so-called need for recycling was a communist plot -- in the 1990s -- and she was completely serious. For some people, caring about nature seems to be quite unnatural.)

Few things piss me off more than the recent fundie craze of saying we need to destroy this beautiful world because God gave it to us to use up before he returns. If God is real, this is his gift to us. If your dad got you a car for Christmas, would you slash its tires and beat the windows in with a hammer because you think he wants you to use it up?

- How much damage can we do? Let's see the Middle East used to be called the fertile crescent and it used to be fertile. Religion and animal sacrifices to let the crops grow instead of crop rotation (which religion banned) turned it into a desert.

As for the rest of it. Was it Beziers that had over a hundred thousand people in it, some had converted to Christianity and some hadn't. When the crusades retook it, they wanted to kill the heathens as God instructed, but they didn't know how to tell the Christians and heathens apart. Their solution \"Kill them all and let God sort them out.\"

When people with access to nuclear weapons have this attitude we're are in deep shit!

To some extent, at least, it is. We don't know how to predict even major trends with all that much accuracy. There are so many factors involved that it's damn near impossible - remember, it was only a few decades ago that most thought we were headed for a new Ice Age. Ocean currents, the extent of plant life, atmospheric content, surface properties, and a whole host of other things that we simply can't reliably predict would have significant impact. This isn't to say it's nothing we need to concern ourselves with; to the extent that we can guess what sort of impact we're likely to see, we should try not to mess things up too much. But it's far from an exact science.

<<< global warming as a major event for a long period in the future may be up in the air, but I think we can all take a glance at New Orleans and see the effects of the warmer oceans. >>>

The effect that is likely (at least in part) responsible for the insane hurricane season - a change in the flow of one of the major ocean currents around the Gulf - is cyclical. It happens every few decades, resulting in much warmer water in the Gulf. Not coincidentally, hurricane season itself seems to follow a similar cycle - a decade or two of below-average activity, followed by a decade or two of above-average activity.

There are so many factors involved that it's damn near impossible to separate human impact from the natural cycles. This doesn't mean we should ignore our effect, but it does mean it's almost impossible to tell what our effect really is.

Actually Crosis - if you look at the temperature graphs for the last 2,000 years (amazing what you can learn from ice cores) it looks a bit like this. _______|

It's not that marked at the moment, but some models that factor in global dimming and a few other factors can have annual global temperatures rising by as much as 10 degrees by the end of the century. Last time that happened 95% of life on earth died out in a mass extinction and it took 20 or so million years for dinosaurs to become the dominant life form.

I'm not saying it isn't happening. I don't claim to be able to predict that warming will end or continue. What I am saying is that both the degree to which it's our fault and what can be done about it are unclear. Relying on the strong hurricane season as an indicator, as TDR did, is a mistake because there are natural cycles that have a significant influence on the situation. There are simply too many variables to know what the effect of any one is (to the extent of a true controlled experiment, at least).

Haha sweet! My submission was posted. It's scary to think that not only is this asshat a moderator of that forum, but is from the same city as I am.

Oh, there was a struggling woman who asked how she should explain her parents' divorce to her daughter. Khristeeanos told this woman that her mother was a \"bad person\" and that for the sake of her child, she needed to sever all ties with her mother because she is an unrepentent adulteress because she remarried. What a tool.

6K years??? Motherfucker, there are civilizations that have lasted about 8 or 9K or so years, maybe much more than that!! Don't mindfuck this whole world with your religious based myths and hysteria, Khristeeanos, because it won't work on me or anyone.